Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has suggested he would temporarily cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in exchange for joining Nato. The negotiation to end the war has begun.
“If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. We need to do it fast,” Mr Zelensky told Sky News.
He implied that he would worry about recovering the eastern provinces and Crimea later: “And then on the occupied territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way.”
Mr Zelensky understands two ways in which the tide of war is turning against him, and is seeking to stay ahead of events. After nearly three years of fighting, enduring terrible losses and hardship, the Ukrainian people are becoming more tolerant of a settlement that ends the war without recovering all Ukrainian territory – something that Mr Zelensky has not previously been willing to contemplate.
The other imminent event is the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House on 20 January. The president-elect has promised to end the war and save the US taxpayer the burden of paying for it. But he has not said how he would bring the war to an end, and the voices around him have contradicted each other. Hence Mr Zelensky’s insistence in his Sky News interview on working with Mr Trump “directly” to “find the new model”. The Ukrainian president said: “I want to share with him ideas and I want to hear from him.”
Hence, too, Mr Zelensky’s offer of a new idea that might provide the basis for a three-way conversation between him, Mr Trump and Vladimir Putin. There is no way that Putin will accept Ukraine’s membership of Nato, but as Nato’s leading members are already engaged at one remove, any peace deal will involve some kind of “Nato umbrella” for Ukraine even if it is not actual Nato membership.
That implies a role for the United Kingdom, as the European nation that has taken the most forward posture in supporting Ukraine. When Putin launched the current phase of the war in February 2022, Boris Johnson declared that “Putin must fail”. Keir Starmer has been more circumspect in setting out Britain’s aim in supporting Ukraine – although he has supplied, without ever saying so, long-range missiles to Kyiv. Perhaps it is time to think about settling for a more realistic aim: that Putin must not succeed.
The Independent recognises that resolute support for the Ukrainian people in resisting Putin’s aggression needs to be tempered by realism. But that resolute support is essential to put pressure on Mr Trump, who will not want to lose face in a contest of wills against Putin.
The more that Britain and other European allies are prepared to step up, the more Mr Trump can tell his voters that he has persuaded the Europeans to take responsibility for their own backyard, and the more that he and Mr Zelensky can negotiate from a position of strength.